1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an interface connector. More specifically, the present invention relates to the structure of an interface connector in which a housing is covered by a shell made of metal and a part of the shell is soldered to a printed circuit board, the interface connector including the shell that maintains both an outer appearance mounted on an electronic device and solderability onto a printed circuit board.
2. Related Art
Interface connectors meeting the USB3.0 (Universal Serial Bus 3.0) standard, which is one of the interface standards, are mounted on electronic devices such as mobile phones, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant), and lap-top computers. Such an interface connecter is connected with a USB cable whereby data can be transmitted and received between an electronic device and a peripheral device.
For such an interface connector (hereinafter abbreviated as “connecter”), a housing having an insulating property is surrounded by a shell made of metal and a portion of the shell is soldered to a mounted surface of a printed circuit board.
However, such a connector is arranged so that an opening of the shell for connecting with an external device faces a lateral face or the like of an electronic apparatus. On the other hand, for an electronic device, in a case in which the outer appearance thereof is coordinated in the color black, if a shell with a metallic color such as silver is exposed at a lateral face of the electronic device, a disadvantage arises which adversely affects the outer appearance of the electronic device.
In order to eliminate the abovementioned disadvantage, it has been considered to color an outer face of the shell in black using a method such as “paint coating”, “plating in black”, or “thin-film formation”. However, these methods all degrade solderability to a printed circuit board. To address this, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, Publication No. 2010-92786 discloses a connecter that maintains an outer appearance at the time of being mounted on an electronic device and solderability to a printed circuit board.
In Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, Publication No. 2010-92736, a shell attached at a circumference of a housing having a contact and constituting an outer shell of the connector is produced by bending to form a base plate with a pattern punched in a predetermined shape. For the base plate, a highly solderable layer is formed on one side that is an outer surface of the shell and a black plated layer is formed on the other surface that is an inner surface of the shell. With such a configuration, since the connector disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, Publication No. 2010-92786 has a black plated layer on the inner surface of the shell and a highly solderable layer on the outer surface of the shell, it improves an outer appearance at the time of being mounted on an electronic apparatus and solderability to a printed circuit board.
However, with the connector disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, Publication No. 2010-92786, a shell is produced in a manner of bending to form after punching in a predetermined patterned shape the base plate for which a highly solderable layer is formed on one surface and a black plated layer is formed on the other surface. Therefore, a problem arises in that a metallic color is exposed on a plate-thickness face of the shell which adversely affects the outer appearance thereof. The number of processes may increase or the processes themselves may become complicated upon making the plate-thickness face of the shell in black.